KIT researchers develop single atom transistor

[HEXUS]

It is a quantum electronics component which can operate at room temperature.

Read more.

[yeeeeman]

Riiight. Now miniaturize this baby and cram a few billions inside a single chip all within a reasonable price. Talk to you again in a few years...

[peterb]

Riiight. Now miniaturize this baby and cram a few billions inside a single chip all within a reasonable price. Talk to you again in a few years...

How miniature do you want to go - at one atom wide it has - as the article says - reached the limits of miniatureisation

Describing the new transistor, the KIT blog says that it reaches the limits of miniaturisation. A gel electrolyte connecting two minute metallic contacts contains a gap just one atom wide.

The big plus is the reduction in power consumption. However it will be a fair few years before this makes it into mainstream production yet more before it becomes a consumer device.

[Tabbykatze]

Moores law eat your heart out xD

[shaithis]

How miniature do you want to go - at one atom wide it has - as the article says - reached the limits of miniatureisation

Unless there is a way to make transistors from sub-atomic particles

[Ttaskmaster]

Moores law eat your heart out xD

I believe it's still relevant, as the theory also applies to the prices of Nvidia graphics cards...

[ETR316]

Riiight. Now miniaturize this baby and cram a few billions inside a single chip all within a reasonable price. Talk to you again in a few years...

a few? this will be more like 30

[aidanjt]

That's an awful lot of atoms for a single atom transistor.

[Ice Tea]

Looks like something knocked together in a shed with a hot glue gun.

[devBunny]

How miniature does yeeeeman want to go? He's looking at the big picture (above) where the one atom transistor only works because there are a gazillion other atoms around it. At a guess I'd say he's looking forward to having all of that reduced to a minimum. :-)

I may be wrong but my understanding of gaps is that there needs to be something either side for there to be a gap between. So if the gap is one atom wide, how big is the transistor really? If that gap is empty for Current Off and contains a silver atom for Current On, where does the silver atom go when it's not in the gap and what mechanism controls its movement ... so, again, how big is the transistor really? Hopefully the support system for the "one atom" won't be too many magnitudes larger.

[philehidiot]

How miniature does yeeeeman want to go? He's looking at the big picture (above) where the one atom transistor only works because there are a gazillion other atoms around it. At a guess I'd say he's looking forward to having all of that reduced to a minimum. :-)

I may be wrong but my understanding of gaps is that there needs to be something either side for there to be a gap between. So if the gap is one atom wide, how big is the transistor really? If that gap is empty for Current Off and contains a silver atom for Current On, where does the silver atom go when it's not in the gap and what mechanism controls its movement ... so, again, how big is the transistor really? Hopefully the support system for the "one atom" won't be too many magnitudes larger.

It's electrons which cause switching between 1 and 0, not movement of entire atoms. I didn't see whether it specified the size of the atom in use for the measurement. If it's hydrogen then it's pretty small but just moving up to helium means the measurement is 4 x bigger. If it's polonium then it's probably a Russian design. I think the size of an atom is just being used for headlines and not actually an indicator of function.

[philehidiot]

Moores law eat your heart out xD

I believe it's still relevant, as the theory also applies to the prices of Nvidia graphics cards...

I thought that was the law of criticality, not Moore's law?

[Ttaskmaster]

I thought that was the law of criticality

No, that's how vocally nitpicky and condemnatory the Mods will let me be before they ban me!

[philehidiot]

No, that's how vocally nitpicky and condemnatory the Mods will let me be before they ban me!

I've only had one warning from the Mods so far...

[chj]

It may require x10000 less energy but when you scale it up I wonder how much of a hurdle heat dissipation will be? Isn't that the real challenge of moores law and what will ultimately require us to use different substrates?

[devBunny]

How miniature does yeeeeman want to go? He's looking at the big picture (above) where the one atom transistor only works because there are a gazillion other atoms around it. At a guess I'd say he's looking forward to having all of that reduced to a minimum. :-)

I may be wrong but my understanding of gaps is that there needs to be something either side for there to be a gap between. So if the gap is one atom wide, how big is the transistor really? If that gap is empty for Current Off and contains a silver atom for Current On, where does the silver atom go when it's not in the gap and what mechanism controls its movement ... so, again, how big is the transistor really? Hopefully the support system for the "one atom" won't be too many magnitudes larger.

It's electrons which cause switching between 1 and 0, not movement of entire atoms. I didn't see whether it specified the size of the atom in use for the measurement. If it's hydrogen then it's pretty small but just moving up to helium means the measurement is 4 x bigger. If it's polonium then it's probably a Russian design. I think the size of an atom is just being used for headlines and not actually an indicator of function.

I followed the link in the article.

the KIT researchers present the transistor that reaches the limits of miniaturization. The scientists produced two minute metallic contacts. Between them, there is a gap as wide as a single metal atom. “By an electric control pulse, we position a single silver atom into this gap and close the circuit,” Professor Thomas Schimmel explains. “When the silver atom is removed again, the circuit is interrupted.” The world’s smallest transistor switches current through the controlled reversible movement of a single atom.